Goodbye Slack

For the last several years, we have used Slack as our primary way of communicating in the Development department. However, company-wide we have Microsoft Office 365 licences, so other departments use Teams. I always thought it was a dumb decision to use Slack due to essentially paying twice for a communication tool. Slack isn’t that expensive on the lower tiers but it adds up when you have a large amount of staff. Plus, due to stricter security policies, we wanted to use single-sign on so had to upgrade to the Business+ licence which didn’t seem to be worth the cost.

As time goes on, we keep “improving security” which I often think is just an excuse to get rid of certain software. How do you really determine which software or companies are secure anyway? They could tell you they use certain security practices or have some accreditation but if your data is exposed in a data breach is another story.

“not sure what you can hack via Slack. Just over reacting like everything these days. 2FA all the things!”
me

On Slack’s Enterprise licence, they boast even more security features and with our new strict security policies, the management decided that we would have to pay significantly more to keep using Slack, or just get rid of it. So they decided to get rid of it.

To be fair, Teams has improved a bit over the years, and although I prefer the way Slack looks, and its excellent emoji support (you can add custom emojis!); I can’t justify the cost.

why is slack not secure as opposed to teams? probably just nonsense. Where does the data go when it is lost? surely doesn’t leak out onto the dark web!
Rob

We somehow had over 900 members according to Slack Analytics but I reckon that was every historic user since we started using it. Scrolling down the list and roughly estimating, we seemed to have around 300 which could reasonably be called “active”. Then looking at the Business+ costing, it should cost $45,000 per year. Enterprise is one of those tiers where it says “contact sales for a quote”. One manager reckoned it would cost $250k a year to use which doesn’t sound right. How can you justify such an expense for a chat application? Even if it did cost that much on paper, surely you can haggle that down significantly. I’m sure Slack won’t want to lose us. Surely charging $60k is good profit for them.

I often think the way companies charge for software licences doesn’t make sense. They often just charge “per user per month” but there will be times where people don’t actively use the licence due to the work they are doing, or maybe have annual leave to take. Then there’s people that join temporarily, then people just naturally join/leave the business over time. So who really tracks what the accurate amount you need to pay. Companies just end up overpaying for licences they don’t need. Slack seem to suggest they charge just for active users. But what happens if you just send a few messages for 1 day in the month; is that an active user for the month? I often think the best approach would be to charge for a certain amount of users, but then give out an extra 25% keys for light usage.

One thing that I found interesting when looking at Slack Analytics is that most people seemed to be sending as little as 20 messages per day. I think that they are either super focussed and just work independently, or they are chilling out. It’s hard to believe that you can work well in a team, or even have a good relationship with them if you only send 20 messages. I find that some people use instant messaging by sending a sentence per message, which will inflate the message count which makes the numbers even more surprising. For example, they could send 4 messages for this interaction:

Hi

Are you free?

I was wondering if you can help me work out this error

I have just got the latest code but am unable to log in

The decision to remove Slack was disappointing for some, but the bizarre thing is that we got told by our manager on the Wednesday, it was formally announced on Thursday, and gone by Friday 4pm. If you were on annual leave that week, you would be confused when you could no longer access Slack on the following Monday. There was some great information that we had on there, and was great to search for common errors and find solutions to them. We didn’t have enough warning to try and extract the information.

“Has the cost of the loss of productivity and collaboration been factored into the decision to remove slack?”
Sad developer

One developer had a crazy idea of developing our own solution:

“We are a software development company. If we’re that desperate, can’t we write our own messaging system, protected to the security standard we want?”
Ambitious developer

The thing is, we already made a chat application for our users. I never understood why users would want a native chat app when they could use something more widespread. Since we already have a chat app, then it could actually make sense to add more features to it; then use it internally.

Making your own tools isn’t as cheap as you would think. If a developer’s wage is £35k, then paying only 1 developer to develop and maintain it each year is £35k. You may as well just pay for Slack then. But if we are using it and selling it to our users, then it does make more sense.

The weird thing is, for our upcoming software, we originally used Okta for the login functionality but it was decided it was too expensive, so a few developers got together and made their own solution. That seems bonkers to me because that is about security, so surely you should leave it up to the company that specialises In security. So the fact that we do make custom authentication makes the idea of making a chat app even more realistic.

However one of the architects working on this upcoming software ironically replied:

“We need to move away from homegrown solutions, especially based on the presentation happening now from our Head of Security”
Hypocritical software architect

Another architect supported this claim:

“This is about minimising home grown solutions when an off-the-shelf solution would do just as well”
Software Architect

Does that mean he should be bringing Okta back?

Slack Analytics #2: September 2020

In Slack Analytics, I stated:

I have sent 1,700 messages for the entire year.

I was interested to see my output this month. I have been sending a lot of messages to my Apprentice, I’ve been engaging in conversations with managers and testers to discuss many of my bug fixes. Some new Apprentices joined and I have also been helping them. Also, since I don’t get to physically talk much, my Slack usage has gone up.

1,803 messages over 26 days.

In Slack Analytics, I also mentioned the highest number of messages sent by someone was “3,500 across the 18 days she was in the office”.

Again, she still leads the monthly charts, but this time has 3,709 over 21 days, so it’s basically stayed the same.

Now this is interesting. How can you make everyone work at home, yet her message count hasn’t increased that much? I was expecting to see several people have counts that eclipse this figure.

Slack only allows you to see Last 30 Days, or All Time, so I don’t think I can get access to see the change pre and post lockdown. You would imagine taking away face-to-face communication will increase everyone’s usage.

I guess there are two ways to actually slack-off work. Using Slack to send banter messages to your colleagues, or just not working. So message counts could go up because more people can get away with not actually working, or it can go down because they really are slacking-off work.

The new Apprentices have been pretty quiet so far, and I would have thought they would be constantly messaging people since they wouldn’t have a clue that was going on. There’s a developer that is really quiet when we were in the office and he never seems to publicly post anything on Slack. I tend to forget he exists.

Developer	Days active	Message Count
Apprentice A	22	286
Apprentice B	21	525
Quiet Developer	23	429

Slack Analytics

The Great Slack Cull

Hundreds of people were removed from our Slack account for inactivity. This led to a massive backlash of complaints, so many got their accounts reinstated.

The manager that arranged the cull, stated that the analytics showed they didn’t use it, and so he requested to know if they have a reason for wanting an account.

When I checked, some of these people had only posted 20 messages prior. Not sure when they signed up, but it seems like they really weren’t using it, or getting their money’s worth out of it. It costs around £5 per user per month, so that is a waste.

When one person was challenged, he said he was informed it was mandatory to have Slack, yet his office didn’t use it and they preferred to use Microsoft Teams.

What I’d like to know is, why is their office using our department’s budget? They don’t work with us at all; they work on completely different software.

I think Slack is a waste anyway. a) The fact that there was a cull implies they are conscious of the budget and want to cut down, and b) it isn’t necessary for the department to function. We could just use Microsoft Teams which we already pay for.

The Code Location War

There’s a repository that contains basic UI controls owned by Team A.

Team B have some specialised controls and suggested that the more complex controls in Team A’s repository are moved over to Team B’s repository instead. Both teams were happy and agreed on when to do this.

However, a Manager from Team C stated that he didn’t believe this was the right thing to do. So much so; that he has then had a meeting with some other Managers who also agree with his viewpoint.

So let’s recap here. Numerous developers in two teams have agreed who should own some code. A Manager from a completely different team, and has no reason to care where this code is located; only that it works – is unhappy. Not only that, but he has also gone out of his way to drum up support from two higher-ranking Managers who have even less reason to care.

Why is this even a thing?

So an hour long debate was arranged and the decision was that the code should be owned by the original creators; Team A. I didn’t know the outcome of the meeting at this time. However, no one actually did anything after the meeting. There again, it wasn’t even handed over properly in the first place.

I found this out when I heard one of the members of Team A talk about how they are gonna address one of the Bugs in one of these controls. If this was handed over properly, those Bugs would have transferred over to Team B. I pointed out that Team B should be doing this work, and one of the members of Team A agreed with me. However, the manager of Team A, who was on the debate and should know the outcome of the meeting – was confused why Team B had “moved” (well, duplicated) the code into their repository. (The code was moved after Team A and Team B had agreed to do so, and it was this that triggered the meeting to discuss it. The manager of Team A should have also known this).

She then had to ask the manager of Team C what the outcome of the meeting was, and he confirmed Team A should own the code, and he also seemed unaware that Team B had taken the code. He then said he is going to organise another meeting with Team B to discuss the outcome.

How many meetings do we need? Why wasn’t the outcome of the debate passed on to Team A and B? Why are two managers who were involved in the debate confused about the original situation?

Another meeting happened at the request of Team B. This meeting was hosted as a conference call on Slack, and as I always rant; there’s a 15 person limit. This shouldn’t be a problem, because why would 15 people be invited to this meeting? Well, we don’t live in a normal world. The funny thing is, the Team B member that requested the meeting couldn’t even join due to hitting the limit. Brilliant.

Slack Police

I’ve said in previous blogs there’s a team that are extreme Slack fanboys, and will try and drum up support for Slack, and hate for Microsoft Teams.

One of their team members questioned if anyone else was having network issues because his Slack conference call was horrendous. People started replying saying that they have long since abandoned Slack for conference calls because:

A) Sometimes members of your team cannot be heard

B) The audio quality is often poor

C) There’s a limit of 15 participants.

D) Calls cannot be recorded

It’s a simple fact that Microsoft Teams is vastly superior for conference calls. You can debate all you want about the text messaging features, emoji support and layout. Arguing for Slack conference calls is just ridiculous fanboy talk.

Quickly, the chief Slack Fanboy then posts something along the lines of:

“Please don’t post any Slack vs Teams debates. I don’t want to respond to these conversations”
Slack Fanboy

But yet, this is coming from the guy that made an emoji which is “Anti-teams” and will use it against anyone that mentions Teams. He also doesn’t have to respond to conversations on Slack; he can just ignore them. He often fuels the fire, but then complains when he loses the debate.

Enforcing The Quality Process

If you find a bug, you are supposed to log it. Simple logic. However, people get annoyed when they log a bug, then the developer just tells them it’s a simple configuration option they have missed, or they don’t even have the latest version. It can take time filling in the Bug report, and it’s annoying when you have to almost instantly close it.

So then you get the attitude where people will rather email the problems, and hold off logging it until a developer confirms that it’s probably a valid bug. If the developer doesn’t actively check, then bugs can go unreported; which can be a disaster.

The other day, a Senior Tester posts a massive stack-trace in Slack. I have a quick look and realise it is a bug. As I was about to reply, another Senior Tester, (who is about to be promoted into some kind of Quality Process Manager or some nonsense; or maybe that is a rumour), tells him to repost it on Microsoft Teams. But not just one post, she wants it posted across two channels for “maximum reach”.

Or maybe maximum annoyance.

It’s really dumb, we have this process, and someone that is supposed to enforce the process – and definitely someone that will be enforcing the process in her new role – is coming out with nonsense like posting in informal channels.

If there is a Bug, then log it. It can always be closed with a valid explanation; which can help others in the future if the same problem crops up again.

Unprofessional Slack

I find that people can be rather informal on Slack due to people perceiving it more like an Instant Messaging client, rather than a formal communication channel like email.

Here are some examples words and phrases:

Words, phrases or spelling that I would consider “Baby speak”: Fanks, looksies,
Very similar to the point above: comedic phrases like Facejacker’s Brian Badonde: “Bwoh bwexcellent work”,
Switching letters for comedic effect: “fassive mailure”.
Old English phrases: “I say, old bean”
Regional slang. I’ve seen it all, from Geordie “howay”, Yorkshire “off t’meeting”, and Cockney “I’ll have a butchers at your report”.

When we are in a multicultural team, there is no way a non-English speaker understands this. I did ask the non-English members of my team, and they were unaware of Cockney rhyming slang. They did recall a few phrases from films that they had seen and were now enlightened.

Other comedic spellings/phrases/inside-jokes can be confusing or make people feel left out.

Other unprofessional examples:

People putting silly statuses including sexual innuendos. They would never do this on Skype.
People posting stuff they would never write in an email or say to your face. I was communicating in a thread with someone over the course of an hour. It was time to go home, so I left the office. He then posted some meme along the lines of “and he’s gone!” implying I fled because he asked me to do work. There is no way he would have said that to my face. I have never even met the guy in person or spoke on the phone.
Someone asked for help with putting a video together. For some reason he added a random swear word. One guy points it out that it is NSFW, then someone makes a joke about the video consisting of pornographic material, someone else makes a joke about a convicted sex offender. No idea why people thought any of these things were appropriate, and it is completely out of character for our company culture. If I hadn’t read it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it happened…

but I guess anything goes on Slack.

Slack Analytics

I recently discovered that Slack has an analytics page. We’ve been using Slack for around 1 year now, and the statistics sure were interesting.

The channel with the most posts is the team that were responsible for the adoption of using Slack. They collectively have written 74,000 posts in that one channel. That figure is seriously alarming. What about posting in other channels, or sending private messages? Damn.

Well, their highest individual posted 64,000 messages, but the average for their team was around 30,000. Their newest member of their team led the monthly charts for December with 3,500 across the 18 days she was in the office.

I think I use Slack far too much, but I have 1,700 message for the entire year. Yet, that is half the leading December poster. My team’s channel has around 1,100 posts. So we post around 74 times less than the highest posting team. That particular team has posted 2.5 times the second place team, so they are ahead by some distance.

I do wonder how much Slack impacts productivity. I think the team that is leading the Slack charts is perceived to be very productive and innovative by the Managers. Yet perception by Managers is often different from the actual truth. I often hear their team claim they are too busy and that other teams need to help out with their backlog. Maybe if they weren’t on Slack so much, then more work would be done? I don’t see how one team can justify sending 74,000 messages across a year. That is a staggering amount.

Nerd Elitists #1: Anti-Microsoft

Recently a group of people have started responding to questions about why things aren’t working with the answer “because you are using Microsoft” (or similar). A conversation may play out like this:

timeinints: I’m getting a crash when installing Software X

Elitist: Are you using Windows?

timeinints: (excited because they know how to solve it) Yes I am

Elitist: Well, there is your problem!

It reminds me of my university days when people said similar things. Also, people were just obsessed with Linux, but even though the Graphical User Interface was perfectly fine, they would always use the command line. Those Linux extremists would then respond with statements along the lines of “it would work if you did it on the command line”.

Recently, we have been having troubles with conference calls on Slack, but when we try using Microsoft Teams, the audio is perfect. After announcing that we will switch future meetings to Teams, we had several Slack fanboys react to our announcement with an “anti-Teams” emoji on our Slack channel. These people don’t usually contribute to our channel, they were just lurking, but they jump at the chance to show their anti-Microsoft agenda.

I don’t think that elitism creates a good working environment, especially when people are struggling with some problem, then they get an arsey, dismissive response instead.

Slack inconsistencies

Recently, we started using Slack due to someone waxing lyrical about how all the cool tech companies are using it. Here are my top things I hate about how my colleagues use Slack:

1. Inconsistent use of threads

When we used Microsoft Teams, people were mocked when they posted a brand new message instead of replying to the previous one. However, even though it’s the same people using it, replying to a message seems to be uncool in Slack, and it seems encouraged to post a brand new message even though you are referring to a previous post. This causes people to act all irrationally, because then they get confused if they should either simply post, @ the person, reply and repost etc.

When you get two questions in a short space of time, people have no choice but to “create a thread”. This gets confusing because part of the conversation then appears as replies, but the start of the conversation were separate messages. Sometimes people still won’t start a thread, then just keep @’ing them instead.

When you want to find previous conversations, you end up having to scroll through all that crap which may have been a conversation between 2 people and no one else cared. If it was a thread, it would just be collapsed into one message.

There is also a Thread section which shows you threads you are involved in, but then they are incomplete because people’s inconsistent use of threads, so that feature is frustratingly useless.

2. Going off on a tangent of memes

People seem to see Slack as a casual way of communicating. Maybe because it has the name “Slack” which doesn’t sound as corporate as Teams or Skype. The level of professionalism dips to the point that people are just replying with a GIF, then someone else replies with another GIF. Maybe the GIF had some relevance, but the reply would probably just be a GIF that the person liked. Maybe they didn’t understand why the first GIF was chosen and thought it was a great opportunity to reply with a cute cat. Sometimes you have gone so far off on a tangent, you don’t even know what triggered a response

3. Replying to yourself multiple times like its some kind of instant messenger client and you think you need a second by second update about what you are doing

People seem to view Slack as an Instant Messaging client, whereas with Teams they viewed it as a Message Board. People tended to write longer messages on Teams, and if they needed to post some additional information, they tended to edit the original post.

Since Slack is perceived as Instant Messaging, people often post quick messages one after another, so it’s like:

Tim: “Can you give me access to this repository”

Mark: “Hang on”

Mark: “You should have access now”

Mark: <thumbs up emoji>

Tim: I have access now

Tim: thanks mate

4. replying to a thread but also posting it to the channel even though no one cares

This is very much like point 1, but I think it deserves a special mention. Sometimes a thread has formed and may have several replies in it. I am happy, several people are using the software as it is designed. Then boom! Someone comes in with a basic comment like “I agree with this” and then they tick the box to repost it to the channel. It’s like they think their opinion is so important, they have to make sure everyone sees it.

5. Too many channels.

We have so many channels, many teams have a private channel just for them, and a separaate channel for outsiders to ask questions. Some teams even have a third channel where only bots post the main content. They link it up with GitHub so that any Pull Request or Issues are just reposted to the channel. I guess they have disabled their email alerts and prefer to get the messages in Slack. Often, people go into the channel then say “@here ^” to cause an alert to everyone to check it. Surely the Slack channel was created to avoid the email alerts, then people are replacing them with a Slack alert.

6. people using @channel @here as it if it is important

That brings me onto the next point, people using @channel and @here tags. Normal messages give you an unread notification, @ tags give you a desktop alert like it’s important.

@everyone notifies every person in the #general channel

@here notifies only the active members of a channel

@channel notifies all members of a channel, active or not

If you look at Slack’s official documentation https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/202009646-Notify-a-channel-or-workspace, they say “We suggest using @here, @channel, and @everyone sparingly.”

An example when to use them:

@everyone – Alert everyone in the company about the emergency evacuation drill.

@here – You’re locked out of the office and need help from someone already at work.

@channel – Update a project team’s channel about a last-minute change in deadlines.

But people use them daily. It’s like “@channel can you tell me where I can find the specification”, “@here can you tell me who knows most about automated testing?”. I end up “muting” most channels to prevent these alerts from showing. It is never that important.

7. You can only have 15 participants on a conference call.

Most teams only contain several members, so team calls are usually fine. Recently, teams have been doing demos, or individuals have been attempting to share their knowledge via a live tutorial; and we have hit the limit. Even when people know there’s gonna be more than 15 participants, they will still host the call on Slack. Why? Because Slack is what the cool kids use. What you gonna do? Post messages in Slack asking the presenter to record it? Slack doesn’t have that feature. Here’s a GIF of a child crying.